The Notorious Gabriel DiazRuthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress

by Cathy Williams

  Usually Gabriel accompanied his driver to meet her at the station, and the thrill she felt whenever she laid eyes on him lounging against his car, waiting for her, had not diminished over time. Right now she needed to give herself a few moments to get her thoughts together, so she headed for the nearest bench and sat on it while the crowds surged around her. Against her will, she flattened out that horrid page on her lap and stared.

  Gabriel, with the obligatory champagne flute in one hand and a sultry, sexy brunette laughing up at him. The same sultry, sexy brunette was in all the pictures with him, in a tight, tight dress and high, high heels. She had lots and lots of rippling dark hair, and what really shook Lucy was how good they looked together. Dark, arresting beauty matching dark, arresting beauty. The camera loved them both.

  Had Gabriel complied so willingly to her insistence that they only meet at weekends because it suited him that way? She couldn’t get her head round the thought that there might be another woman in his life. Surely she couldn’t be so mistaken about someone’s personality? She hated herself for even thinking that she was sharing him with someone else, that she couldn’t trust him, and yet…

  He didn’t care about her. Not really. He certainly didn’t envisage any sort of long-term relationship. He had made it clear from the very beginning that he wasn’t a man into commitment, that he was repulsed by needy, clingy women….

  And for a man who was not emotionally tied in any way wouldn’t it be easy and tempting to take what was on offer and see no problem in it? Wouldn’t exclusivity be something that just didn’t exist in his world the way it did in hers?

  He was waiting impatiently for her outside, but as soon as he spotted her slight figure emerging from the station Gabriel felt himself relax. He had to suppress a smile at the sight of her waterproof jacket flapping in the wind.

  She had indulged in a couple of new items of clothing over the months they had been seeing each other, but she never looked truly comfortable in anything that was fancy. She had proudly donned this new jacket for him a couple of weeks ago, and he had refrained from telling her that the fashionable length and the very attractive belt that she could pull tight to accentuate a waist that was a handspan were sadly diminished by the multitude of pockets—most of which were unnecessary—that turned the jacket into a fashion disaster. When she told him where she bought it he had tried not to wince.

  The truth was that the more he saw her, the less he could picture her in anything but clothes in which she felt comfortable—although that didn’t mean that he intended giving up on trying to buy her a new wardrobe. The most she would allow him to buy for her was a meal, and even then he always got the feeling that she would rather be staying put or, when it had been warmer, dragging him to picnics in the park, where she’d insisted on getting him on a bike before enjoying lunches she’d enthusiastically prepared herself, despite his protests that he could have the whole thing fully catered—right down to bringing a butler to help.

  ‘You’re late. I was beginning to get worried.’

  Lucy looked vaguely up at him and saw a laughing man with a champagne flute in his hand and a sexy brunette at his side.

  ‘I…I thought I’d forgotten something on the train and I had to dash back inside to have a look.’

  ‘And had you?’ He couldn’t wait. He tipped her face up and kissed her with a distinctly uncool lack of restraint.

  Every single thought instantly flew out of Lucy’s head. Her body reacted as it always did—with a surge of pure, undiluted longing.

  ‘You have no idea how much I’ve been wanting to do that,’ Gabriel said gruffly.

  And have you done that? was Lucy’s thought. With another woman? A dark-haired curvy woman with huge breasts and big hair…?

  She didn’t want to be thinking these thoughts. She desperately wanted to be the liberated, carefree woman he thought she was—a woman who was as uninvolved as he was, apart from the sex angle—but the thoughts still kept filtering through her brain.

  ‘I’d planned on taking you to one of the top restaurants in the country.’ He opened the door and then settled down in the back seat alongside her, leaving his driver to deal with her overnight bag. ‘But I’m thinking that a night in might be altogether more enjoyable.’

  He couldn’t keep his hands off her. Once or twice he had paused to ponder this interesting phenomenon, because no woman had had that effect on him before, but his pondering never lasted longer than a few seconds. He was well trained in only accepting the facts that fitted in with his life plan.

  ‘I think I’d prefer to eat out,’ Lucy told him with a forced smile. ‘But not at one of those restaurants with fancy menus and dishes with names I have to ask the head waiter to translate.’

  ‘It’s their job. They don’t mind.’ He grinned at her. ‘In fact, it probably makes their day when someone asks them to explain in English what there’s no need to say in French.’

  ‘Except no one does, do they?’ Lucy muttered, trying and failing to drag herself out of the gloomy vortex into which her thoughts were heading. She laboured the point, her face averted because one look at him and she would be reduced to drowning all over again. ‘I mean the people who go to restaurants like those all know what the stuff on the menu means. They’re well travelled. They don’t have to ask for help.’

  ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘Nothing’s got into me. I’m just saying.’

  ‘Where would you like to go?’

  ‘Oh, let’s just stay in,’ she conceded in an abrupt turnaround, because even though she was busily lecturing herself on the stupidity of saying anything—anything at all—about those pictures in the trashy magazine she had only glimpsed accidentally, in her heart she knew that she would. And a scene in a restaurant would be much more embarrassing than a scene inside his house.

  Although restaurants weren’t furnished with king-sized beds and baths that could comfortably hold two…

  Restaurants also didn’t come with scope for her falling into his arms at the slightest opportunity.

  Like right now, when he was lightly tickling her wrist on that very sensitive bit that he knew she loved. She couldn’t move her hand any more than a chained man could run a marathon.

  ‘Good,’ Gabriel said with satisfaction. ‘It’s been a long week, and I’m in urgent need of just the kind of relaxation only you can provide.’

  ‘It’s always sex with you, isn’t it, Gabriel?’

  ‘Okay. So now I’m thinking that there’s something wrong. Did that fool deliver the wrong plant order?’

  ‘No, that was all fine.’ It was brought home to her just how much he knew about the daily workings of her life. He often telephoned, and she would chatter merrily away. She loved the sound of his voice, and yet…how much did she know about the daily workings of his life? She definitely hadn’t known about any openings of art galleries!

  ‘Then do you want to tell me what’s bugging you, or shall we go round and round in circles till we get to my place?’ Whatever was on her mind, Gabriel was supremely confident that he would be able to sort it out. She had a gratifying respect for what he said, just so long as he didn’t touch on the subject of her attire.

  ‘I’m just tired.’

  ‘Easily sorted. I have just the remedy for that.’ He shut the partition between himself and his driver and turned to her.

  ‘Gabriel, no! You can’t…people can see right in!’

  ‘It’s dark outside. An advantage of the days getting shorter. And we’re not stuck in traffic.’

  God, he wanted her. It was the same every weekend. He just couldn’t wait. But never before had he felt the overwhelming need to touch her before they’d even made it to the house. He peeled aside the lapels of her coat and slipped his hand underneath the various layers of thermal vest and jumper to tease his way under the stretchy bra.

  ‘I loathe it when you wear a bra,’ he growled softly.

  ‘I thought you loathed it when I went without
one….’ She curled her fingers into his dark hair and rested back as he pushed up her clothes and the bra in one easy movement, so that one breast offered itself to his searching mouth. When he latched onto her nipple with a low moan of contentment she couldn’t stop herself from wriggling lower in the seat.

  It was mind-blowingly erotic to watch him through lowered lashes as he suckled hard on her nipple, drawing it into his mouth and sending piercing arrows of pleasure through her. As always, just with one touch, her body was screaming out for more.

  As the car purred into the cul de sac he reluctantly detached himself from her breast, neatly pulled her clothes back down and grinned.

  ‘You taste like heaven….’ This was so much more effective than talking sometimes…. ‘One of these days we’re going to go on a drive, park in an isolated lay-by somewhere and I’m going to make love to you very thoroughly in the back seat of this car…. I’m going to start with your mouth, and then I’m going to move to your breasts, and by the time I get to…’

  ‘Shh!’ Her face was bright red, and the worrying thoughts that had been her companions on the train were temporarily displaced by images of him doing those things to her in the back seat of his car.

  ‘Let’s get you inside. I’ll order something for us to eat later.’

  He was an irresistible force, and she was as powerless in the face of it as a matchstick being swept along on a wild, torrential river.

  By now she was familiar with his house and no longer over-awed at its size and opulence. She knew its layout intimately, and so she knew where they were going as soon as he branched off to the left.

  His study was one of the rooms in his house that she loved the most. Unlike the rest of the rooms, most of which she privately found lacking in soul, the study was warm and decorated in deep colours. The Persian carpet was all faded rich reds and burgundies, the velvet drapes that pooled on the ground were of a similarly dark maroon colour, and the desk was a huge mahogany antique. To one side a low, comfortable sofa had been positioned for those times, Gabriel had told her, when he wanted to work through the night with only occasional interruptions for sleep.

  They made it to the sofa in a state of semi-undress, having left a trail of discarded clothing en route.

  ‘We’ll have to dispense with the foreplay just this once,’ Gabriel husked. ‘I can’t wait.’

  His impressive steel erection pressed against her thigh as he quickly disposed of her pants.

  Lucy moaned her assent. These were the only times when she saw him stripped of his self-control and she loved it. She loved the heady feeling of knowing that she and only she had insight into the real man behind the cool mask of power and assurance.

  But was she really the only one privileged to see that?

  That sudden disconcerting thought came like a fast ball out of nowhere and hit her for six—but already he was edging her legs apart and the thought was disappearing as quickly as it had come.

  He drove into her and she cried out with pleasure. When he withdrew to ram into her with yet more force, sinking his shaft to the very hilt, she crooked her legs over his back and was carried away on a tide of shockingly erotic ecstasy as he kept thrusting, pushing her back on the sofa, pinching her nipples as she arched up to heighten the wild sensations.

  She was carried away with primitive, elemental lust. It emptied her head of all thought, swept aside the dimensions of space and time…

  Only afterwards, when they had both surfaced from their lovemaking, did the questions begin again, nibbling away at the back of her mind with sharp little rat’s teeth.

  He was sprawled on the sofa, the very picture of the Lord of the Manor whose needs had been met, and Lucy pushed herself up to clamber over him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Gabriel asked with lazy amusement. He propped himself up on his elbow and savoured her nudity. ‘Good luck locating all your clothes. I think if you follow the trail you’ll probably get to the first item we discarded when we walked through the front door.’

  He reluctantly followed her out of the room, watching as she scooped up underwear in one place, her jeans somewhere else, all the way until she was clutching the last item and heading up the stairs. He thought that she moved like a dancer, lithe and graceful.

  Lucy was screamingly aware of his eyes on her behind, and she hurried up the stairs—only to spin round at the top and ask in a rush, ‘So…I never asked…how was your week?’

  The question took him by surprise. ‘My week was fine—and yours?’ He dealt her a smile of pure amusement.

  ‘You know how my week was. You telephoned and I told you all about it.’

  ‘The business with the plant order…that illustration that’s giving you trouble…Martha the landscape gardener who’s having an affair with John the other landscape gardener on the team… Oh, yes—so you did…’

  ‘It’s all very boring, isn’t it?’ Lucy sniped back.

  Now she felt ashamed that she had flung herself into bed with him when she had all these ugly doubts at the back of her mind. Had she no pride? Could it be undone so easily with a few caresses? She was desperate not to let those pictures get to her, to give him the benefit of the doubt, but was that because she really and truly believed that he would never cheat on her? Or because the thought of having to deal with something that might end up in a place she didn’t want scared the living daylights out of her?

  ‘What’s got into you?’

  Lucy didn’t trust herself to answer. She spun round and flew down the marble corridor, with its silk rugs and the perfectly positioned chaise longue, towards his bedroom, where she proceeded to fling her holdall into the bathroom and slam the door behind her, making sure to lock it. Many a time, her bath had been interrupted by him, and they had ended up doing things to each other that would have made her hair curl six months ago. Right now, she just wanted to think.

  She ran a bath and let her body relax in the bubbles. So she had gone and fallen in love with him, she thought bitterly. Well, she was on a learning curve now, and the first thing she would have to master was the art of not melting the second he laid a finger on her. He would surely be able to talk his way out of the sexy brunette, and he would probably be telling the truth, but from now on she would have to start pulling back. The longer she remained with him, floating in this vacuum where any future together was a subject that was strictly off-limits, the more she would be hurt when they inevitably broke up.

  He was clothed and on the bed when she emerged into the bedroom, his dark eyes watchful.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Gabriel said bluntly.

  ‘I just think we need to talk.’

  ‘We talk a lot.’

  ‘I talk a lot. I tell you all about my dull life at the garden centre. Since when are you really interested in plants and flowers and landscape gardeners having flings?’ She paced the room, only pausing to throw him a frowning look from under her lashes. She could have added that he wasn’t interested in her family…that he had practically banned any talk about that…

  ‘I’m interested because you’re interested,’ Gabriel said shortly.

  ‘Not good enough, Gabriel. And I don’t want to talk to you here.’ She hesitated when he continued to look at her coolly, without moving a muscle. He would be hating this—but tough. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

  ‘Just tell me where this is leading, Lucy, and spare me the dramatics.’

  ‘I’m not being dramatic.’ She felt like a piece of elastic, stretched to breaking point, and it was really hard looking at him because she was so aware of how weak she was in his company. She went to her holdall, in which she had stuck the glossy magazine, and pulled it out. The backs of her eyes stung with unshed tears as she smoothed out the centre spread and walked over to the bed with it.

  ‘What’s this?’ Gabriel slung his legs over the side of the bed and walked over to the window with the magazine.

  She was fighting to hold back tears. He could see that. The
re was nothing he disliked more than a weeping woman, and he fought off the unusual temptation to pull her to him and let her cry. He realised that he didn’t like thinking of her unhappy. She so seldom was. He glanced down at the coloured pictures and then stopped to look a little more carefully at the pictures of him, taken by one of the snap-happy photographers who had been milling at that art gallery like parasites.

  ‘Well?’ Lucy was stunned when he casually stretched out his hand to return the magazine to her. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

  ‘What’s there to say?’ He threw the magazine onto the chair when she failed to take it and strode towards her. ‘Since when have you started reading rubbish like that? I’m disappointed. I thought you had better taste.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of taste, Gabriel. You’re missing the point!’

  ‘And what is the point?’

  ‘You never mentioned a word about any art gallery opening! You never said a thing about going there with some…some…woman…’

  ‘I didn’t think I had to give you a minute-by-minute explanation of what I do during the week!’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all!’

  ‘No? It sounds that way to me,’ Gabriel said coolly. He had never tolerated having his movements questioned and he wasn’t about to start now. ‘Look how worked up you are! Let’s go downstairs—get some food, have something to drink. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’ As conciliatory gestures went that was as good as it got—and it was considerably more than he had ever offered any other woman.

  Lucy’s heart was beating furiously as they went back down the stairs. He hadn’t even seen fit to explain those pictures and she was tormented by what his silence on the subject meant. A part of her wished that she had never mentioned anything at all, and she had to will herself into acknowledging that it never paid to duck reality.

  She accepted a glass of wine and listened to him in dull silence as he ordered food in from his caterers.

  ‘How am I making a mountain out of a molehill?’ she asked shakily. ‘Who was that woman? Are you involved with her?’